News

Political Blotter: Former San Mateo supe, Bush White House aide to lead Latino GOP effort

By Josh Richman

Bay Area News Group

Posted:
02/25/2013 06:22:39 AM PST

Updated:
02/25/2013 06:22:46 AM PST

This is a sampling from Bay Area News Group's Political Blotter blog. Read more and post comments at www.ibabuzz.com/politics.

Feb. 21

Former Bush White House aide Ruben Barrales -- also a former San Mateo County supervisor, and a child of Mexican immigrants -- will be the first president and CEO of GROW Elect, a group founded in 2011 to recruit, endorse, train and fund Latino Republican candidates in California.

The organization says Barrales' hiring is part of an aggressive expansion of its plan and a dramatic increase in its funding.

Barrales for six years served as President George W. Bush's Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, the White House's senior representative to state, local, territorial and tribal government officials. He liaisoned with governors, mayors, state legislators and other elected officials, and also separately served as a chairman of the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status.

Barrales was elected to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in 1992 and served as the board's president 1996. He ran for state controller in 1998 but lost to incumbent Democrat Kathleen Connell. He served as president and CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a San Jose-based public-private civic organization, from 1998 to 2001.

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Most recently Barrales has served as the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce's president and CEO -- the largest regional chamber in California, with a full-time staff of 26 and an annual budget of $4 million.

GROW Elect has elected 30 Latino Republicans to local office across California since 2011, it says; among the successful candidates it supported in November were incumbent Milpitas Mayor Jose Esteves, incumbent Hercules City Councilman Dan Romero, Dublin-San Ramon Services Board Member Edward Duarte, and incumbent Hayward Unified School District Trustee Luis Reynoso.

"GROW Elect has already made a difference in California," Republican National Committee Co-Chairwoman Sharon Day said in the group's news release. "With Ruben's leadership it will take the recruitment and support of Latino Republican candidates to a new level."

Feb. 22

California handguns would have to have owner-authorized safety mechanisms such as biometric readers, and stolen firearms would have to be reported within two days, under new bills from an East Bay lawmaker.

"Senseless violence occurs far too often when guns fall into the wrong hands," state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said in a news release today. "I introduced these bills to improve gun safety and help law enforcement better keep firearms out of the hands of criminals or illicit gun traffickers."

SB 293 would require that handguns have an owner authorized safety mechanism, such as biometric readers or other technologies.

SB 299 would require that anyone whose firearm is lost or stolen must notify local law enforcement within 48 hours of the time they knew, or reasonably should have known, of the loss or theft. If the firearm is later recovered, local law enforcement would have to be notified within 48 hours of the recovery.

DeSaulnier said his bills also take aim at reducing gun-related suicides, by decreasing illicit guns on the streets and preventing unauthorized users from operating handguns. About about 19,000 of the nation's more than 31,000 gun-related deaths each year are due to suicide, he said, and firearms are the nation's leading method of suicide.

DeSaulnier last year had authored SB 1366 requiring lost or stolen firearms to be reported to local law enforcement. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill in September, writing that for "the most part, responsible people report the loss or theft of a firearm and irresponsible people do not," and he was "skeptical that this bill would change those behaviors."